We study a set of new functionals (called entanglement--breaking indices)
which characterize how many local iterations of a given (local) quantum channel
are needed in order to completely destroy the entanglement between the system
of interest over which the transformation is defined and an external ancilla.
The possibility of contrasting the noisy effects introduced by the channel
iterations via the action of intermediate (\it filtering) transformations is
analyzed. We provide some examples in which our functionals can be exactly
calculated. The differences between unitary and non-unitary filtering
operations are analyzed showing that, at least for systems of dimension $d$
larger than or equal to 3, the non-unitary choice is preferable (the gap
between the performances of the two cases being divergent in some cases). For
$d=2$ (qubit case) on the contrary no evidences of the presence of such gap is
revealed: we conjecture that for this special case unitary filtering
transformations are optimal. The scenario in which more general filtering
protocols are allowed is also discussed in some detail. The case of a
depolarizing noise acting on a two--qubit system is exactly solved in a general
case.

We study a set of new functionals (called entanglement--breaking indices)
which characterize how many local iterations of a given (local) quantum channel
are needed in order to completely destroy the entanglement between the system
of interest over which the transformation is defined and an external ancilla.
The possibility of contrasting the noisy effects introduced by the channel
iterations via the action of intermediate (\it filtering) transformations is
analyzed. We provide some examples in which our functionals can be exactly
calculated. The differences between unitary and non-unitary filtering
operations are analyzed showing that, at least for systems of dimension $d$
larger than or equal to 3, the non-unitary choice is preferable (the gap
between the performances of the two cases being divergent in some cases). For
$d=2$ (qubit case) on the contrary no evidences of the presence of such gap is
revealed: we conjecture that for this special case unitary filtering
transformations are optimal. The scenario in which more general filtering
protocols are allowed is also discussed in some detail. The case of a
depolarizing noise acting on a two--qubit system is exactly solved in a general
case.